Dear Children,
Well the big family news is this:
The August flash floods in Las Vegas that
delayed our flight out of Oakland
when we visited Shawn’s family came back with a vengeance in September and
destroyed Morty’s TV Shop! If any of you
have been on Facebook, he has posted photos.
This week, the flooding at UNLV came across Maryland Parkway and spilled over into
all the downstairs businesses in Morty’s complex. Morty could see it coming from seeing the
force of the water when it hit the Pizza place on one end of the complex. It gave him enough time to raise some of his
merchandise to higher locations but the fire department was warning everyone to
leave the building since their front walls are all glass and they expected the
water to break the glass. He has done
lots of clean up, going back the next day to survey the damages. He rented a U-Haul to take what he could
salvage to a storage unit, and had a chance to talk with the landlord. Since the owners are very anxious to get the
wet sheetrock cleared, they offered the tenants their initial deposit if they
removed everything from the stores.
Morty was leaving town for the weekend so he hired some people to finish
where he left off. He will have a lot of
decisions to make this coming week. We
will be in Las Vegas
on Thursday so it will be good to hear about it first hand. I also look forward to hearing all about
Nate’s trip to Israel
and of course, cheer Dad and Aaron along on their long bike ride.
Morty was here last weekend for a
very quick trip. He came in late Friday
and left early Sunday morning but was in Eugene
for a University
of Oregon game all day
Saturday. Since Oregon
State also had a game that afternoon,
Morty and his friend took some back roads to go around Salem which saved them waiting on the freeway
for hours as many experienced due to other freeway problems along that stretch.
Dad has been so busy at work; too
busy to stop and look for good, strong help.
I am kind of relieved that the last young man preparing to leave on his
mission (that Dad hired all last year) is now gone on his mission. I feel like some of those young men are a
liability with little real benefit to the company. But, this young man couldn’t get a job
anywhere else and, anyone that is lucky enough to work for Dad learns many more
lessons than just a strong work ethic example to prepare them for other things
in life and especially a mission. I
would love to help Dad find some hard workers so he can be the planner and
director a little more than the worker.
SendOutCards is keeping me busy
these days. We had a nice gathering here
of local distributors to hear of some changes the company made to the business
side. I love that they are ready with
new tools, websites and helps so we can just keep working! With holiday cards around the corner, the
interest is even higher for the personal user.
The company added 80,000 new customers in July and August and sent over
2 million cards of gratitude with the emphasis on the 30 Days of Gratitude Challenge.
Hey, Steven Bitter received his
mission call to Uganda
and will leave December 27. That is a
great time to leave! He is going to
school right now at BYU Idaho. Speaking
of BYU, I just hate to see the Cougars lose.
We watched the BYU-Utah game on fast mode last night but since it was so
long, we finally caught up to real time.
Wendi celebrated her birthday this week.
Kyre tells us that she is working instead of going to school right now
and plans to go to China
next year with some organization. We
hope to learn more when we see her at William’s baby blessing in two weeks from
now.
I am still limping along trying to
prepare for the Tobler Triathlon. Last
Saturday as I lifted my sunglasses to be able to read Dad’s odometer (I was
riding his mountain bike since mine was not shifting well) to see if I had gone
my 12 miles, I lost control of the bike and ran into the fence. Besides getting an arm and hand full of
slivers from the fence, when I finally landed on the ground, I came down hard
and got my knee twisted in my handlebars.
After untangling myself, I said out loud even though no one was around, “Well,
now my left hip doesn’t feel so bad!” It
is not funny. I still have the biggest
bruise and a knot on the inside of my right knee. I have been trying some home remedies to get
rid of the bruise but noting works on the knot and I keep icing it. I have not been able to do my jog-walk which previous
to my bike incident, I was very pleased to be up to 5 minutes jog-2 minutes
walk progression. My physical therapist
bumped me up to that after she had me jog in front of her on my last
visit. Luckily, I can swim which helped
me initially get most of the slivers out of my right side.
So, Friday evening I decided to get back on the bike
for just a short ride. Not realizing
that the derailer was bent in the crash, as I headed up a steep hill and moved
to the lowest gear, my chain came off and I couldn’t stop myself from tipping
backwards and fell back on my back side.
Ouch! Now I am mad and
discouraged but still hoping I am better to go to Clovis.
President Harris spoke in sacrament meeting about a nightmare that he
had where he walked down a long hallway and opened a door which contained
something very evil and scary behind it.
In his dream he did that three times even though he knew what was behind
the door. As he spoke I wondered if
getting back on the bike a third time is as dumb as reopening a door over and
over again when you know what bad thing is behind it!
We are enjoying lots of vegetables
from our garden. I made up a huge batch of
salsa yesterday and I predict it will be gone by the end of the day. Our Swiss chard just keeps producing and even
our apples taste yummy. We have had Adrianne’s
recipe for zucchini lasagna several times.
I just love her Thrive tomato powder
every time I make that recipe. I can’t
wait to use it in my spaghetti sauce instead of buying those little cans of
tomato paste! Plus, I have a soup recipe
that calls for two tablespoons of tomato paste; what do you do with the
leftovers except forget it is in the fridge and grow mold! I am looking forward
to using the powder for that recipe.
We were able to visit Scott on the benches in the
outdoor area this weekend. We used to do
that just to give Scott some outdoor time but he actually tries to get outside
as much as possible after work on the weekends.
He has been invited to join in volleyball and soccer tournaments. He also went to tryouts for the prison’s main
soccer team. He went for the experience
since it would be very difficult to play on that team. A couple of weeks ago, one fellow player
asked him what country he was from since he didn’t play like a North American.
That was a great compliment to Scott.
In tears Scott reported about a man that was attending
the branch when Scott first arrived at OSP.
After being released, he asked to be able to go to church. His parole officer said that he could go if
someone accompanied him to meetings.
After a time, he asked if he could be baptized which the bishop agreed
to but the stake present, a former district attorney, denied. The mission president asked if he could
interview the man requesting to be baptized and agreed that he was ready to be
baptized. After a year the bishop
interviewed him for the priesthood.
Knowing how the district attorney, who tried his case years previously
felt about him, the man was worried about his stake president interview. He prayed for days prior and received an
answer that he must not let his pride get in the way and continue in his path
regardless of the outcome of the interview.
In the interview he was asked how he felt and he mentioned his thoughts
about pride. The stake president
admitted that he also felt that way and apologized to him. He chose the stake president to ordain him.
Scott was reading an old Ensign that had an article
about writing autobiographies with some questions to answer to get started. He spent some time in the last few weeks
working on a ten page autobiography. He
said that reading the life history of Grandpa Bitter inspired him to want to do
that. He said reading Grandpa’s words
allowed him to remember Grandpa’s voice.
I hope that you all had a great weekend. It is supposed to stay warm here this week
and then we head to Las Vegas . . . This was the weekend for Shawn and Aubrey’s
Ragnar Relay where
they ran from San Francisco to Sonoma County. I forget what they said the theme
was this year. Last year they dressed up
as hillbillies and I did not recognize Shawn when I saw him! We enjoyed staying with the boys last year at
this time. This last week, Katie was in New York attending tons
of sporting events including a NASCAR race.
Love you all,
Mom
